


Everlasting

by reddiebitch



Series: Reddie Fairytales [7]
Category: IT (2017), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe - Tuck Everlasting Fusion, Eddie Kaspbrak Loves Richie Tozier, Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier-centric, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Reddie, Reddie Fairytales, Richie Tozier Flirts, Richie Tozier Loves Eddie Kaspbrak
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-30
Updated: 2018-07-30
Packaged: 2019-06-17 12:54:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15461829
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reddiebitch/pseuds/reddiebitch
Summary: If you could choose to live forever, would you?Time is like a wheel, ever turning, ever passing, never stopping. For Eddie Kaspbrak, time passed slowly, every hour of his life seemed an eternity. For Richie Tozier, time didn’t exist. One fateful summer in 1880, both of them are drawn to do things they have never done before, spurred by the ever-fickle nature of time. These choices will bring together two strangers and create an unbreakable bond between them, but what happens when unbreakable bonds are broken?Or, Eddie Kaspbrak runs away from his strict, well-to-do family in 1880 and meets a boy with a secret.[Tuck Everlasting AU]





	Everlasting

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on tumblr [@kaspbrak-eddie](http://www.kaspbrak-eddie.tumblr.com)

**1880**

Eddie Kaspbrak had always lived a life of formality. After the death of his father when he was young, the estate that had been left behind had provided more than enough for Eddie and his mother to live a life of ostentatious luxury. They were able to afford all of the finer things in life, and enjoy those things they did. His mother was a rather particular woman, aggressive when things did not go her way—which is to say, absolutely perfect. Eddie had grown up listening to his mother complain day in and day out to shop owners, cooks, housekeepers; anyone who would listen, basically, about whatever seemed to hold her anger at a given moment. It seemed to Eddie that she was always upset about _something;_ and as he had gotten older, that something had become him more and more often. She never approved of his behavior unless he was sitting at her side, quietly nodding along as she ranted and raved about anything and everything: the chicken being too dry, the sheets not being clean enough, the shop not having the correct kind of pastries. Eddie preferred to spend his time outside, an activity that was definitely not encouraged by his mother. The Kaspbrak estate included land—acres and acres of it, and Eddie would be damned if it didn’t go to good use. If it was up to him, most of his days would be spent outside reading in the shade of one of the many trees on their property, or exploring the outer reaches of the vast amount of wooded area they owned; searching for new clearings and streams and gardens. Most of the time though, days for Eddie consisted of reading, practicing the piano, more reading, being forced to sit in the parlor with his mother and her stuffy friends, and more reading. Listening to the gossip of high society and pretending he was paying attention was getting harder and harder with every passing day, and it was in those moments when he resented his life the most: sitting through his mother drone on in her sticky-sweet voice about drama that he absolutely could not care less about to her friends who cared far too much about it.

And then there were the girls. His mother had been trying to set him up with women she deemed to be of their social status for the last five or so years, none of them grabbing his attention in the slightest. He was by all standards a very appealing suitor, all of the women his mother brought for him to meet fawned over his soft, perfect brown hair, his freckles, his warm, brown eyes. He, on the other hand, found himself taking a liking more to their brothers.

He did enjoy the comfortable life somewhat, he didn’t mind not having to work like a lot of boys his age had to. As a teenager, it was expected of boys to begin apprenticing under an expert in a profession that appealed to them. At eighteen, it was conventional for men to have the beginnings of a career under their belts in the field that they had spent their teens apprenticing, and it was encouraged soon after that they move out, get married, and start a family. Eddie was now nineteen, almost twenty, and he had no such plans. The life of manual labor held absolutely no allure for him, many of the boys in town chose to apprentice for a blacksmith, a butcher, a bricklayer—professions that absolutely disgusted Eddie, so he was glad that his mother insisted he not work. She claimed he was too “fragile” for such a job, and while Eddie knew that wasn’t really the case, he didn’t complain. On one hand, it would just make her angry, which was always a nightmare in and of itself to deal with. On the other, he enjoyed learning, and if their wealth allowed him to not work and spend the majority of his time reading and educating himself, then so be it.

He could get out of spending time with his mother most of the time by claiming he was in the middle of a fascinating book about colonial law—or whatever he happened to be reading at the time—which, as a child, had led to him spending as much time learning as he possibly could. He had thought about going to college: studying to become a lawyer, a doctor, something like that. He had certainly read enough to become a lawyer: he had blown through his parents’ entire library three times over and then some, save the large collection of poetry that had been his father’s, which had never piqued his interest. He more enjoyed reading works of literature; poetry had always seemed frivolous and far too trivial for his taste. He had read their entire fiction collection before the age of nine and had blazed through the all of the nonfiction books in their library before he was fifteen. Since then, he had stuck mostly with the heavier nonfiction books and research journals that had been left in his father’s study—a room his mother never went in, claiming that it was still too hard for her. As a kid, it had been forbidden for him to ‘snoop around’ (his mother’s words) in the study, so all he had at that age were stolen moments and some late nights during which he had snuck downstairs after he’d been sure his mother was asleep. As a teenager, his mother had been more willing to let him spend time in the study, upon his request for more books to read. It had become a safe haven of sorts, a place he had always been able to count on being able to spend time alone in, the only space in his life that was ‘Sonia-free’, as he had joked to himself once. He spent hours, sometimes days in it, falling asleep reading by candlelight in the large leather armchair.

His mother supported his love of reading well enough, it kept him busy as well as educated and well-spoken for when he interacted with her friends. His aspirations for schooling, however, she did not approve of as much. She would be pleased if he never moved out of her house—she wanted him to marry and start a family there, to stick around to take care of her in her old age. She claimed there was no need for him to go to college when they had the money to support his building a family without an income. She had been trying for years to get him to agree to stay with her, to marry a pretty girl and start a family in the same house he’d been raised in—to be the perfect son and have the perfect family she’d always dreamed of as a legacy to leave behind. Since Eddie was fifteen it had been girl after girl after girl, always coming, never staying. All she needed was to find a girl who was willing to put up with the both of them, and she was getting close to achieving her goal.

She’d had a girl to the house multiple times over the last few months for Eddie to court, although in actuality it had been more so her courting him than the other way around. Unlike the other girls he’d been introduced to, she didn’t seem to mind the overt lack of attention or attraction from Eddie’s end, which had led to the multiple meetings. Most of the other girls over the years had given up after one or two dinners with him and his mother, either due to Eddie’s obvious apathy towards their presence, or Sonia’s overbearing, aggressive demeanor. This girl, Myra, seemed nice enough, but Eddie would rather die alone than spend the rest of his life feigning attraction and starting a family with someone he didn’t love, all while under the watchful eye of his mother. After it had become clear that Sonia absolutely adored Myra, and that neither of them were going to take no for an answer, Eddie had decided two things: one, he was going to run away, and two, he was going to do it by whatever means necessary. If that meant defying his mother for the first time in his life, then that was exactly what he would do.

The morning after he had made the decision—telling himself there was absolutely no way he would allow himself to back out of it, staying up into the night to pack the things he’d need to take with him—he woke up and immediately changed his mind, deciding to wait a few days before leaving. He figured he should probably make a plan first, and that plan’s first step was to figure out how to get out of the town he’d lived in his entire life. He’d never been allowed to play outside much, his mother always claiming some thinly veiled excuse for the prohibition—the possibility of rain, the heat, the dirt, his so-called “sensitivities.” He had never explored the extensive wooded area that stretched behind his home, always looking at it longingly from his bedroom window. Before running away into the great unknown, he figured it would probably be a good idea to get his bearings first. That morning, he went out to explore the forest at the outskirts of town, the forest that started just at his backyard, the one that his family owned in its entirety. He started off early while his mother was still asleep, bringing nothing with him and sneaking out of his bedroom window, scaling expertly down the large oak tree that sidled up to the house. He wasn’t at all worried about getting lost in the forest, although he’d never stepped foot more than a few yards into it, never further than his mother could see. He reeled at the thought that she had no idea where he was or what he was doing for the first time in his life. With every step away from his house, his confidence grew—with each step, he was further away from his home than he had ever been, besides carriage rides into town with his mother to run errands. With each step, he was further away from _her._ The idea of physically putting miles in between himself and the depressing entity that had become the conglomeration of his mother and Myra had him beaming outwardly, and debating simply abandoning his prudent plan for a more spontaneous one. Once he’d been walking for almost an hour, he was really having a hard time convincing himself to ever turn back.

As this internal struggle raged on in his mind, his feet kept moving quickly, increasing the distance between himself and his home, everything he knew. His feet were arguing with his mind while he was screaming inside—screaming of fear for the unknown, screaming about all of the disgusting, terrible things that happened in a world where you didn’t have someone else to do all of the gross things for you. As the battle was growing louder and louder in his head, a sharp contrast to the peace and quiet around him, overwhelming him and making his chest feel tight, he happened upon a break in the trees. It opened up to reveal a clearing with a small brook running through it, its mouth spilling out into a small pool at the base of a large oak tree, not unlike the one that stood resolutely next to his own house.

At the edge of the water knelt a boy who looked to be about Eddie’s age. He was rinsing his face in the stuff, picking it up in handfuls and letting it run over and dampen his dark, wild curls. Eddie tried to lean forward to get a better view; he came from a very small town where strangers were uncommon, and this was definitely someone he had never seen before in his life. He was obviously not as well-to-do as Eddie, dressed in a simple loose white tunic and a pair of dark woolen pants, the ensemble pulled together with a pair of beat-up leather work boots. The boy’s back muscles were shifting ever so slightly under his thin shirt as he leaned forward again to drink some of the water. Eddie took a small step forward to balance himself, but what he didn’t notice was a small stick at his feet. When he put his foot in the soft soil below him, the twig snapped under his weight, and the boy whipped around to face him with a look of abject horror on his face, his eyes impossibly wide and magnified by a pair of thick glasses that were perched on his nose, slipping down slightly due to the water on his face. He pushed them up by the bridge as he stood quickly and with a shaky voice asked, “Oh fuck how long have you been standing there?”

“N-not long, I promise. Sorry,” Eddie replied, instinctively backing up and raising his hands up on either side of him defensively.  

The boy began walking slowly towards Eddie, looking around nervously as he moved, as if someone else might be listening. “How did you even find this place? You shouldn’t be out here. You should go… Go before someone else sees you here.”

“I was just… just walking past. I was exploring,” Eddie stammered nervously, then frowned quickly, his expression changing in just a blink of the other boy’s very large eyes. “Well hang on, don’t tell _me_ to get out of here, my family owns the ground you’re standing on right now, who are you to tell me to leave? Maybe _you_ should get out of here.” He squared his stance, crossing his arms and turning his body to face more towards the other boy, who was still slowly approaching him, seemingly unfazed by Eddie’s declaration.

“Oh, you’re a Kaspbrak are you, then? You Frank?”

Eddie shook his head quickly, “Frank was my dad.”

The other boy’s eyes shot wider, “ _Was_? Jesus. Are you…” he snapped his fingers as if trying to summon the thought, “Um… Are you Edward then?”

“Yeah, Eddie,” he replied shortly.

“God, already?” The boy remarked quietly, grimacing as he reached a hand up to rub at the back of his neck, his eyes tracking up and down Eddie’s body. “Well, Eddie, want me to show you the way back home? You must be lost if you’re this far in the woods.”

“Already?” Eddie shook his head as he whispered the word, mostly to himself, then cleared his throat. “I know exactly where I am, thank you very much. Need I remind you that these are _my_ woods? I may just get a drink before I head back, I’m dying of thirst, I’ve been out here for over an hour and it’s starting to get hot.” He began to make his way to the tree by which the boy had been kneeling a few minutes before.

The boy smiled for a second and quipped, “You’re damn right it’s getting hot, but no.” He shook his head forcefully at the last word.

“I’m sorry, what do you mean by no?” Eddie said, moving his hands to his hips.

“It’s… You can’t drink it. It’s not clean, you’ll get sick.”

Eddie furrowed his brow and gestured at him, “ _You_ just drank it. You were practically bathing in it when I first walked past.”

“You—I—Well I’m not feeling so great now so that’s why I said that. I don’t think it’s any good, so don’t drink it. I don’t want you to get sick, you’re too cute to get sick.”

“I’m too… I’m too? _Cute?_ ” Eddie let out an exasperated sigh and began walking again, quicker now, pushing past the other boy. As he approached the small brook, he felt a hand grab his upper arm tightly, pulling him back. He broke out of the grasp, but as soon as he had, he found himself being tackled to the ground. He looked up to realize he was pinned between the ground and this boy, who was keeping him down with his body weight alone, their faces only inches apart. Eddie could feel some of the other boy’s hair brushing against his forehead.

The boy shot him a dumb, toothy grin, “Sorry, I’m not that strong. Body weight is my only option. But you really can’t drink that water.”

Eddie squirmed from underneath him and it dawned on him with dread that he couldn’t move. At all. The other boy didn’t look like much, his gangly limbs held no fat and not much muscle, but he was considerably taller than Eddie so they probably weighed nearly the same. “Would you get _off_ of me, you stupid idiot! Do you have any _idea_ how gross this is? My clothes will be filthy and my mother is going to fucking lose her mind.”

“Sorry, I just—” he snapped his head up to look towards the edge of the clearing, “Shit.”

Eddie heard a voice coming from the direction the other boy was staring, his eyes wide and dark, his face lined with trepidation, “Richie? What is going on here?” Eddie tried to twist his head to see who the voice was coming from. He still couldn’t move, Richie had gone slack on top of him, making it even harder to wriggle out of his grasp. “Earth to Richie?” The voice called out again, this time with a sing-song tone to it. It was a pleasant voice, one that sounded like it should belong to a schoolteacher or a grandmother. Richie stared back in the direction of the voice, Eddie could see his still very wide eyes and mouth hung slightly ajar.

Richie broke out of his trance, pushing his glasses up on his face, elbowing Eddie in the shoulder in the process, “Mom,” he whispered. It was all he could get out. With that, he quickly scrambled to his feet, his eyes darting between the woman at the edge of the clearing and Eddie still on the ground at his feet. After a second, he reached a hand out to help Eddie up, pulling him up with a bit of a struggle. They both turned to face Richie’s mother. “This is Eddie, mom. Eddie Kaspbrak.”

“Oh God, Richie, you know what your father will have to say about this. We should take him back with us until Dad gets back tonight, he’ll know what to do.”

Richie nodded at his mom then looked at Eddie’s panic-stricken face, “Sorry, we just have to…Mom can explain when we get home. Or maybe she’ll want to wait until Dad gets back. He had to go into town to take care of some business tonight but he’ll be home later. I promise we’re not bad people, we just… there’s something I can’t tell you. At least not right now.” As Eddie looked back into Richie’s dark, kind eyes, he thought about his life up to that point. All of his instincts were screaming at him to be terrified, to run, but he somehow wasn’t scared at all. He didn’t want to run; he was less scared at that moment than he had been in the entirety of his short life. He weighed the options in front of him and knew he was finally at the crossroads he’d been waiting for as long as he could remember. Go home? Or go with Richie? His mind went back and forth at lightning speed: why should he follow this boy he’d never met, this boy who was very obviously hiding something? But what would he have to gain from going back home? The same old gossip, piano practice, life of doing literally anything to escape spending time with his mother? With his possible future wife? Going back would just be twofold of the boring horror he’d spent his entire existence barely tolerating. Running away, starting a new life had been what he’d wanted anyway, hopefully finding one filled with more adventure in the process. This had been the exact opportunity he’d needed.

So, he stood straight, looked Richie right in the eyes, and took a deep breath. “Let’s go.” The smile that appeared on Richie’s face in response was one Eddie didn’t think he’d ever forget. The walk to their house was not a long one, just a few miles through a bit more woods, on the other side from town: further away from Eddie’s house than he’d ever been in his life. Once they arrived, Richie’s mom made her way into the kitchen to, Eddie gathered, begin making dinner: as she walked away from them she yelled over her shoulder, “You boys go busy yourselves until dinner is ready.” Richie smiled at him and Eddie watched as he ran off erratically towards a staircase by the entryway and followed him up to the second floor of the house.

The stairs led directly up to a large landing that Richie had apparently fashioned to be his bedroom, with a large bed in the corner, just one thin blanket hanging halfway off the edge. The bed was under the window, and sunlight streamed in through it, casting shadows across the messy, unkempt sheets. Richie made his way to the other corner of the room, pulling a cot down from where it was propped up against the wall. After he half lowered it, half dropped it on the floor, he looked up at Eddie. “You can hang out in my bed,” he said, pointing at the bed under the window, “I’ll just be on this.” He plopped down on the bed and pulled his legs up in front of him, crossing them on the thin mattress of the cot.

“Oh, you don’t have to give up your bed,” Eddie said quietly, wringing his hands anxiously where they were folded in front of him.

Richie shook his head, “Nah it’s fine, I used to sleep in this thing all the time.” He leapt up, crossing the room to a huge pile of books by the foot of his bed. “I’ve got a bunch of stuff to read if you’d like, just pull anything out,” he said as he plucked a book from the top of the pile. It was incredibly worn, the leather cover fading and the binding broken in multiple places.

“Uh, thanks.” Eddie watched Richie make his way back over to the cot and sit back down, fixing his glasses and opening the book to a very obviously frequented spot. “What are you reading?” He asked as he grabbed the book that was next in the stack and situated himself on the end of Richie’s bed.

Richie looked up from the book, a toothy smile on his face. “Wordsworth, he’s my favorite. You read poetry at all?”

Eddie chortled, “I read pretty much everything but poetry.” He examined the book in his hands as he spoke, it was also poetry--this one a collection of Thoreau.

Richie was still grinning, “Well, good luck, then.” He pointed at the large stacks of books on the floor, “That’s all poetry.”

* * *

A few hours into their reading, they heard a commotion downstairs as Richie’s father returned home. They heard a short muffled conversation between him and Maggie, before he yelled up the stairs, “Rich! Your mother tells me you’ve got something to show me! Why don’t you come downstairs, dinner will be ready soon!”

Richie looked over at Eddie from where he was sprawled out on the cot, laying on his stomach with his legs extending over the edge of the bed that he was too tall for. He earmarked the book, even though it seemed he had read it approximately one million times, and pushed his glasses up as he met Eddie’s eyes. “Guess mom didn’t tell him about you, this should be interesting.”

Eddie sat up nervously in the bed and nodded. They both got up quietly and made their way down the stairs, rounding the corner and entering the kitchen. They stopped in the doorway, Richie standing one step ahead of Eddie who was peeking over his shoulder. Wentworth looked between the two of them frantically, “What… What is going on here, Rich?” He looked over at Maggie and whispered under his breath, “Mags… What in the hell.”

She took a deep breath and said, “Went… This is Eddie… Kaspbrak.”

“Ah Jesus, Richie. What have you gone and done now?”

Richie took a step back and put his hands up defensively, “It’s not my fault! He found me at the spring. I didn’t know what to do.”

“Well, we’re going to have to…” Wentworth sighed and reached a hand up to massage the back of his neck, a movement that mimicked exactly what Richie had done earlier that day when Eddie found him. “I guess we’ll just have to figure something out. In the meantime, let’s eat. I’m fucking starving,” he finished with a tight smile.

As they sat down to eat, Eddie marveled at the dynamic between the three of them, it was something he’d never experienced in his life. Richie’s parents treated him as an equal, which was a stark contrast to what Eddie was used to at home. For his entire life, his mother had acted as if he was too fragile to do anything; he made no decisions on his own, they were always made for him. The leash his mother had him on had stayed the same length since his father had died: incredibly short.  So he sat and ate his dinner quietly, just listening to their quick banter and stupid jokes, until his thoughts were interrupted by Wentworth when they were all nearly finished eating: “Hey, son, we’ll get you home as soon as we can, we’ve just gotta work out some stuff first. Make sure we can trust ya and all.”

Eddie looked up at him apprehensively, “Well, I don’t… I honestly don’t know if I want to go home…” At his words, Richie’s fork clattered onto his plate, the noise echoing throughout the small dining area. Eddie glanced over at him, noticing a deep blush start to blossom in his cheeks. He quickly looked back down and began to push his food around on his plate with his fork to distract himself.

Maggie piped up, “What do you mean you don’t want to go home? I’m sure your mother has probably already probably sent out a search party the size of a small army looking for you.”

“I know, I just…” he continued to shuffle his food around, not wanting to look up, “I don’t want to go back. She’s trying to make me marry this woman that I barely even know.” He finally looked up after he finished speaking; Maggie was looking at Wentworth, Richie was looking at him, his eyes sparkling a bit.

Maggie turned back to him with a sympathetic expression, “Oh, honey. I’m so sorry. You can stay here tonight, but you really ought to be getting back home soon enough.”

Eddie nodded, “Thanks.”

“Hey what if he just sta—” Richie was cut off by his father.

“Rich. You know we can’t do that.”

“Dad! He could help us out, it would be nice to have a Kaspbrak with us…”

“Richie, that’s enough. You head upstairs and go to sleep. Both of you. I’m done with this conversation.”

Richie sighed and pushed his chair back from the table, letting the legs scrape against the ground loudly. He stood up and looked down expectantly to where Eddie was still sitting at the table. Eddie scrambled up, piling his silverware on his plate hastily and moving around the table to join Richie, who didn’t say another word to his parents before turning on his heel and leaving the room. Eddie turned around to quickly and profusely thank them for allowing him to eat dinner and stay the night. He caught up with Richie and they both headed back up the stairs. They got ready for bed quietly, Eddie borrowing a set of clothes from Richie to sleep in. He was left drowning in fabric, but at least a little more comfortable than he had been in the formal clothing from home that he’d been wearing all day.

After about an hour in bed, Eddie was nearing sleep before he was roused by a hushed whisper coming from the other side of the room, “Hey! Eddie Kaspbrak! Are you asleep?”

“Not anymore,” he rolled over to face Richie, who was sitting up in bed with his glasses back on his face, clearly not planning on sleeping anytime soon. The moon was bright that night, and it cast enough light through the window for him to just be able to make out Richie’s body across the room. He was slouching and sitting criss-cross in the middle of the bed facing Eddie, leaning his back against the wall.

“I’m sorry about my dad.” Richie whispered, “Sometimes he can be a little bit protective.”

Eddie sat up, “Protective of what?”

“Our ‘secret.’” Richie put his hands up to mimic quotations in the air in front of him.

“Can you tell me what it is now? I’m not gonna tell anyone… Who would I tell? I’ve got no friends and it’s not like my mom believes anything I say anyway…”

Richie cocked his head to the side for a second, then shook it slowly, “I probably shouldn’t. If you guess it I’ll tell you though.”

“Um, okay. So how old are you?”

“You really wanna know?”

Eddie nodded.

Richie whispered back in the darkness, “...I’m one hundred… one hundred and four to be exact.”

“Shut the fuck up. I’m being serious, dumbass.”

“So am I!” he chuckled, “let’s just call it 18 though.”

“Alright so is your guys’ secret that you’re delusional then? And your parents are just harboring a mental hospital escapee?”

Richie launched a pillow across the room at Eddie, hitting him in the chest. “I really am one hundred and four though, it’s the honest truth.” He sat up straighter in bed, “I was born in 1775, and I’ve been eighteen since 1793.” Eddie sat in his bed, staring at Richie, who stared right back. Eddie simply cocked his head to the side, waiting for Richie to continue talking. He sighed and began again, “You remember that stream you found me by earlier, by the big oak tree? It’s the water, there’s something... wrong with it. We were passing through here a while back and we walked past it, we were all absolutely parched, so we took a break. We all took a drink from that little stream, including the horse—except our cat, that’s important for later. The water in that spring… it was amazing. Best water I’ve ever had in my life, and that’s saying a lot—I’ve been alive for a long ass time—it tasted like heaven.

“The first time we thought something might be… off… was a few months later. We’d passed through Treegap and kept on moving west, and we’d found a little plot of land to settle down. We built a home for mom and dad, and they let me build a little shed out back for myself. As I was working on it one day, I fell. Like thirty feet. Landed right on my neck. Mom thought I was dead, she came running over to me, screaming. But before she even got to me I had already stood back up—I hadn’t broken any bones, I wasn’t hurt at all. Then a few months after that, dad got bit by a rattlesnake. Nothing happened. It took us a while to figure out what had caused it, we had no way of knowing. A couple of years after we had settled on that land, our horse was mistaken for a deer by some idiot hunters who shot him—he survived. That narrowed it down, we figured it must have been something that happened at some point while we were traveling because that’s the only time the horse doesn’t eat its own food and drink its own water and stuff. Our cat died a few years later of old age, and that was the key for us since it hadn’t had any of the water from that spring. Well, dad figured it out, but still. I was there, I helped.

“Once we realized it was the spring, we moved back here to stay close, to try and prevent this from happening to others. We’ve watched people grow old around us, change, age, die. Nothing ever changes for us. And it never will. As far as I know, I’m gonna be eighteen until the end of the world.”

Eddie sat for a minute, straightening up in the bed a bit as he processed the information. “Jesus fucking Christ. You really are delusional.”

“I promise! I can show ya the stream again tomorrow if you’d like. Dip a flower in it or somethin’ so even if you leave you can remember me forever.” Richie winked in the dark.

Eddie sighed, laying back down. “Whatever, idiot. Tomorrow. I’m sleeping now.”

After he’d closed his eyes, Richie watched him for a few minutes. He watched his features go soft as sleep took him over, not crinkled up in the perpetual expression of vague annoyance that they were when he was awake. Richie smiled to himself before removing his glasses and laying down, joining Eddie in sleep from across the room.

* * *

Eddie was beginning to lose track of time. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t remember how long he had been with the Toziers, all he knew was that he was happy for the first time in his life. The Toziers lived their lives in a way that was completely opposite to the way things were done at his house; his mother always seemed to be in a hurry, needing things to be exactly right the first time. She did not stand for any funny business or dilly-dallying, whereas Richie and his family took their time with things. With everything. Here, there was no rush, no consequences for getting something wrong the first time. If you didn’t do it right at first, they acted as if they had all the time in the world to fix it. Because, Eddie supposed, they kind of did. He had never had this much freedom, he’d never been allowed to explore or to ask questions, he hadn’t been allowed to play since he was young, his mother simply did not stand for such nonsense.

He and Richie spent most of their time fooling around, running out in the fields and exploring the forest, just as Eddie had longed to his whole life. The forest was one thing when viewed from your bedroom window, but a completely different beast altogether when you were actually walking in it. It was just as much a living being as Eddie was, something he’d never expected. The trees whistled in the breeze, the frogs and the birds and the bugs all seemed to whisper to him, to welcome him to this part of the world he’d never been allowed to be a part of. Every single thing in the woods reacted to his and Richie’s presence as they walked through it, leaves crunching beneath their feet, branches swaying far above their heads, loose leaves falling to the ground in front of them. Eddie marveled at the bustle of the organisms in the forest every time he walked through it, which was becoming a daily routine for him and Richie. Whether it be to fish, gather firewood, hunt for small game to eat, or simply to curb boredom, Richie and Eddie had spent most of their days out there in the past month or so that Eddie had been with the Toziers. Eddie had finally learned the forest like the back of his hand—thanks to Richie. After a few weeks, it seemed Eddie knew it even better than Richie, who’d lived there for nearly one hundred years.

One day, Richie took Eddie out to explore the woods and let Eddie lead the way; they had nothing to do besides amble around, so they made their way around slowly, stopping to look at anything that caught their eye. Which, for Richie, meant stopping every five feet to look at a weird rock or to chase after a butterfly that Richie remarked was “exceptionally fast.” Eddie watched on, slightly vexed but mostly fond of the boy as he tumbled and raced through the trees carelessly after an insect that, to Eddie, looked like pretty much every other disgusting minuscule flying thing in the woods.

After a few hours, they came across a clearing that held a small river, if you could even call it that—not quite a river, but more than a stream. It ended in a waterfall, leading to a small pool about ten feet below. Eddie watched as Richie peered over the edge, down at the water below them. “Be careful, you could fall in,” Eddie said apprehensively. Richie turned toward him, pushing his glasses up on his nose and smiling mischievously. He walked back to where Eddie was standing and shuffled out of his pants ungracefully. Eddie looked on with dread as Richie removed his glasses and shirt, placing them all on the ground beside Eddie. “Wait… What are you doing?”

“What does it look like?” Richie straightened back up and shot Eddie a playful smile before turning around and bounding to the edge of the small cliff. He jumped off, hollering as he fell into the water. It wasn’t a frightened yell—which was the only type of exclamation Eddie knew how to make; he’d never in his life heard someone yell out of fun rather than terror. _We only yell in the case of emergency, Eddie-bear. Other than that, a young man like you has no business raising his voice._ His mother’s words ran through his mind; he shook his head back and forth quickly to get rid of the intrusive thought and made his way to the edge of the cliff, right to the spot where Richie had jumped from. He looked over to see Richie surfacing, pushing his now sopping, loose curls out of his face. Richie looked up at him with a crooked smile. “Care to join me?”

Eddie shook his head quickly back and forth, trying not to let the terror he felt show outwardly, although he was pretty sure Richie couldn’t really see his face anyway. “No way am I getting in there.”

Richie laughed. “You’re not afraid of a little cold water are you?”

“No! That water looks disgusting is all. Do you know how many germs—"

Richie interrupted him, “Are you afraid of me?”

“No!” Eddie scoffed, then dropped his voice, embarrassed, “I just… I can’t swim.”

“You’re kidding right?”

Eddie put his hands on his hips, “I’m serious! My mom never let me learn.”

Richie moved so he was floating on his back and let his eyes close. “Well then, I guess I’ll just have to enjoy this all by myself…” He opened his eyes back up to wink at Eddie. “Come on, Eds! Just jump! I’ll catch ya,” Richie said, playfully splashing at the water around him.

Eddie grumbled, “Hmph. Fine.” He turned back to where Richie’s clothes were in a pile on the ground and began undressing to his underwear, folding his pants and shirt and placing them neatly on top of Richie’s pile—Richie may not have cared about getting his clothes dirty, but Eddie certainly did. And he was sure that Richie wouldn’t mind him using his clothes as a resting place, protected from the dirt below. He stood back up and sighed before making his way back to the edge of the rock that sat atop the cliff, one step separating him from what he thought to be certain death.

“You promise you’ll catch me? I haven’t ever swum before.”

“I promise, Eds—er… Eddie.” Richie grinned and put his arms out in front of him, mimicking the way someone would catch a young child jumping into water for the first time. Eddie closed his eyes and jumped, thinking along the way that _it had been a mistake it was a mistake who was he to trust this boy he barely knew him what was to say he wouldn’t just_ —Eddie hit the water and just as soon as he’d submerged, a pair of skinny, long arms grabbed him at his back and behind his knees and pulled him out of the water. He resurfaced and pushed his hair out of his eyes, coughing on instinct, even though he hadn’t actually swallowed any water. A hand came up to his cheek and brushed the rest of the hair he’d missed off of his face. “Hey, it’s okay. See? I got you.”

Eddie nodded, blinking water out of his eyes. “Thanks, Rich.” Richie beamed back at him, this was the first time Eddie had seen him without his thick-lensed, large-framed glasses obscuring half of his face, and he lost his breath for a moment. Richie’s eyes were dark brown—almost black, deeper eyes than he’d ever seen in another person. They held the depth of a thousand people who had lived a thousand lives, and that still wouldn’t be enough to describe them. He’d never noticed the freckles that were scattered across Richie’s nose and cheeks, making their own beautiful constellations over his pale skin. Richie stared back into Eddie’s eyes with the same intensity; Eddie could feel him boring holes in the back of his skull through his eyes. He whispered, “Don’t let me go.”

Richie smiled wider now, if that was even possible. “Don’t worry about that, Eddie Kaspbrak. I’m never gonna let you go, not until the day I die.”

They wandered home as the sun was setting, making it in just before it got dark, walking through the fields slowly to drip dry, meandering around and taking the time to watch as the lightning bugs fled their path with every step they took. Upon arrival, they snuck in the door, giggling quietly at something or other until they were met by Maggie just inside the doorway of the house. “And where have you two been? You’ve missed dinner.”

Richie fixed his glasses on his face, “Oh god, sorry mom. We didn’t realize how late it was until the sun started setting. We made our way back as quick as we could.”

“Alright, well, you can just help yourselves to the now cold dinner that is still sitting on the table, your father and I ate without you. We have been worried sick. I’m going to bed.” She turned on her heel and shuffled towards what Eddie assumed was the room she and Went shared.

“Apparently not sick enough that they still ate dinner…” Richie grumbled under his breath as they walked into the kitchen, coming across two plates sitting on the table that were heaped with copious amounts of chicken and potatoes.

They ate the leftover food quickly, Richie scarfed down what Eddie thought had to be some sort of record for the most amount of food consumed in a short amount of time. After they were done, the sun had fully set, and they went up to the loft, taking the candles from the kitchen with them to light their path. Richie tripped up the stairs, just about burning the house down with his candle, but he somehow managed to save it before the flame hit the wooden staircase. They were both pitched into a fit of giggles as they climbed the remaining few stairs, giddy from the day and their full bellies.

Once in Richie’s room, they dressed for bed, and as Richie was padding over to the cot in the corner, Eddie reached a hand out to his bare shoulder. “Wait.” He looked up, meeting Richie’s dark eyes as he turned. “You could… stay in your bed if you want. _We_ could stay… in the bed.” He immediately dropped his gaze, feeling a blush start to blossom on the apples of his cheeks.

Richie reached a single finger out and placed it under Eddie’s chin, lifting his head up to look into his eyes again, watching the blush on his cheeks grow impossibly darker. “I’d like that.”

They climbed in the bed together and Richie removed his glasses and balanced them on the windowsill behind them. He wrapped both arms around Eddie, finding one of his hands and intertwining their fingers. They fell asleep like this, pressed together skin to skin, legs and arms and fingers tangled up until you couldn’t tell who was who anymore.

* * *

A couple of days passed—those days filled with more lazy wanderings around the forest and lounging around the house reading, cooking, napping. On a day very much like the others, they had both fallen asleep in Richie’s bed after a morning of searching the forest for firewood and harvesting the berries in the garden Maggie had started growing a few years back. Eddie woke up at Richie stirring beside him, still seemingly fast asleep. He shifted so that his head was nestled into Richie’s chest, blocking out the sunlight streaming in from the window. His movement woke Richie, who chuckled softly, as to not disturb Eddie’s head pressed up against him. “Well good afternoon, little chinchilla.”

“Shhhh. I’m still asleep,” Eddie whispered, the words slightly distorted as his mouth was still pressed flat against Richie’s chest.

“Do you want to see the Eiffel Tower?” Richie asked softly.

“What?” He replied in a bleary voice, still unmoved.

“The Eiffel Tower. Wanna see it?”

“Why are you asking me this right now?” Eddie yawned, “I mean, someday I guess.” He said, voice still scratchy with sleep.

Richie shook his head, “No. Tonight. After dinner.”

“Mhm sure, Richie.” Eddie finally opened his eyes and moved his head, resting it on Richie’s shoulder and looking up at him. Richie’s eyes were warm and bright but still had remnants of sleep left around them, his face had lines pressed into it from the pillow. Eddie giggled at his bedhead, the curls that normally fell around his face were frizzy and sticking up in every direction.

Richie reached to the ground and picked up the book he’d been reading before they’d fallen asleep. He slid his glasses over his nose and opened to one of a hundred earmarks, how he remembered which was which was a mystery to Eddie. Eddie smiled, “Who you reading today?”

“Whitman,” Richie answered, voice deep. “You know him?”

Eddie grunted a sound that he meant to be taken as a no, nuzzling his nose closer into the warmth of Richie’s neck. “Read it to me.”

 

_“Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road,_

_Healthy, free, the world before me,_

_The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose._

 

_“Henceforth I ask not good-fortune, I myself am good-fortune,_

_Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing,_

_Done with indoor complaints, libraries, querulous criticisms,_

_Strong and content I travel the open road._

 

_“The earth, that is sufficient,_

_I do not want the constellations any nearer,_

_I know they are very well where they are,_

_I know they suffice for those who belong to them._

 

_“Still here I carry my old delicious burdens,_

_I carry them, men and women, I carry them with me wherever I go,_

_I swear it is impossible for me to get rid of them,_

_I am fill’d with them, and I will fill them in return.”_

 

Richie cleared his throat. “So it’s like, he’s leaving his life behind, abandoning what he knew: the ‘indoor complaints, libraries, querulous criticisms.’ He’s free to do what he wants, he’s not shackled by the material possessions or the trivial pursuits that those around him obsess over. He doesn’t need things, he just needs himself. But he still carries those burdens from his old life with him, he will forever. I don’t know… I love this one, I thought you might like it.”

“I love it, too,” Eddie whispered.

Richie smiled and pulled Eddie in closer with the arm that his head was resting on, wrapping it around his upper back and drawing Eddie’s head into his neck. “I bet dinner is ready, want to eat?”

Eddie inhaled deeply, taking in Richie’s warm, earthy scent. He sighed. “I guess.”

After dinner, they headed out just before sunset, walking slowly through the forest that was now all too familiar to Eddie. They walked past the clearing with the spring, past the small river they’d swam in just a few days before, deeper into the forest than they’d ever gone together. Richie stopped when they reached the base of an enormous, steep hill that was littered with rocks and boulders. Richie stepped up onto one and turned around, extending a hand out to a very nervous-looking Eddie below. “You coming?”

Eddie swallowed and nodded, taking Richie’s hand and gripping it tightly. “If we fall and die, I’m gonna kill you.” Richie grinned and wrapped his fingers around Eddie’s hand securely, pulling him up to join him. They climbed this way for a while, Richie first then Eddie following, Richie had obviously done this before. It wasn’t an incredibly long hike up the hill, but it took long enough that by the time they reached the top, the sun was just about to set. After clearing the last boulder and reaching the top, Eddie straightened up and walked toward the edge of the small plateau. He looked out over the entire forest as he caught his breath, the treetops meeting a sky painted every shade you could imagine, and some you couldn’t even dream of: purples, reds, oranges, yellows, and everything in between. With a shiver, he realized he’d never been up this high, he had never seen the _tops_ of trees before. Richie stood behind him beaming, watching him take it all in. After almost a minute of silence, Eddie whispered, “Wow.” He turned his head back to smile at Richie and beckoned for him to come closer.

Richie walked to stand next to Eddie, speaking as he did, “I know, right? I’ve been to the real one in Paris, climbed sixteen-hundred and fifty-two stairs all the way up to the top. And you know what? This is so much better.” He looked down at his side to meet Eddie’s eyes and grabbed his hand again, just to hold it this time. “Especially now that you’re here. I’ve seen a lot of views in my life, and I’ve gotta say, this is one of the best.” He smiled at Eddie, his eyes wide and searching behind his glasses.

Eddie blushed and broke their eye contact, looking back out at the forest below. “It really is amazing,” he whispered. He looked back up at Richie. “Rich? Can I ask you something?”

“Of course you can, Eds. What’s up?”

“Why did you tell me?” Richie cocked his head to the side in confusion, so Eddie continued, “Your secret? You barely know me… how can you trust me enough to tell me something like that?”

“That’s easy.” He smiled, “You’re the first person I’ve ever met that I wanted to know the truth about me,” Richie replied, not missing a beat.

“Well… you’re the first person I’ve ever met that I’ve wanted to…” Eddie said, his eyes tracking quickly back and forth between Richie’s, their faces were close enough that he couldn’t focus on both eyes at once.

Eddie pressed up onto his toes and leaned in, closing his eyes as he did, and placed a chaste kiss on Richie’s lips. He pulled away and grinned at Richie’s expression. His eyes were wide, his features frozen in place. He was nervous until Richie’s eyes locked with his, darker even than before, and he leaned back in, capturing Eddie’s lips in another kiss. This one was deeper, their lips moved together in concert before Eddie parted his own to allow Richie more access. His tongue slipped in and glided across Eddie’s softly. They spent a few minutes like that, just lazily exploring each other’s mouths. Richie kissed as if he had a thousand years to get it right, there was no rush in this, just as there was no rush in anything else Richie did in his life. When they finally pulled back, both of them breathless, Eddie leaned his forehead against Richie’s, allowing himself to catch his breath. Richie leaned up and placed a kiss on Eddie’s nose. “I’ve been waiting for that, Eddie Kaspbrak,” he whispered.

“I’ve been waiting for you, Richie Tozier,” Eddie breathed, his mind still spinning from the kiss.

They got back to Richie’s house late that night, sneaking through the forest in the dark. Something that would have absolutely terrified Eddie a few months ago, but with Richie by his side it seemed a much less daunting task. Once they reached Richie’s house a little after midnight, they crept up the stairs to his loft quietly, careful to not wake up Maggie and Wentworth. They settled back into the position they’d fallen asleep in earlier that day and dozed off facing each other, fighting sleep and just letting their eyes pore over one another until they couldn’t keep them open any longer.

* * *

The next morning, they both jolted awake to a loud banging on the front door. Downstairs, they could hear Richie’s parents scurrying around and they both sat up quickly, Richie shoved his glasses over his eyes to magnify his harried expression. They got up and threw their clothes back on before tiptoeing down the stairs to peek around at the front door. They could see Wentworth and Maggie at the door, talking to two men in police uniforms. Standing next to them, slightly shrouded by the two men, was none other than Sonia Kaspbrak.

“Fuck,” Eddie whispered, looking over at Richie frantically. Richie grabbed his hand and dragged him back up the stairs and into his room, closing the door delicately behind them, sure to make no noise. Once inside, he turned around to look at Eddie, his eyebrows knitted together in concern. “Rich, I don’t wanna go.”

Richie grabbed both of Eddie’s hands, enveloping them almost completely in his larger ones. “I know. I don’t want you to go either. I’ll-- We’ll figure something out. I promise.” He leaned forward to kiss Eddie’s forehead and pulled back, looking into eyes that were brimming with tears. He squeezed Eddie’s hands then dropped them and began to rifle around the room, picking up blankets and rooting through piles of clothes until he found a bag stowed in the corner. He looked back up at Eddie. “We’re probably gonna have to run soon. I bet my parents are stalling down there but your mother is…”

Eddie nodded. “Yeah. I know.”

They heard the door slam from downstairs and heard the heavy footfalls of Went and Maggie as they hurtled up the stairs and into the loft. Went stuck his head through the door and spoke between heaving breaths, “Boys. We’ve got to go. NOW. Eddie, you really ought to be getting home, you don’t need to be dragged into this. This life… it’s… I’m afraid I can’t say it’s worth it.”

Eddie looked back and forth between Richie and Wentworth, still poised in the doorway. “I don’t want--” He took a deep breath and fixed his eyes on Richie, “I’m not going home.”

Wentworth sighed as he watched Richie’s eyes light up, his face breaking into a dumb, toothy grin. “Well, it looks like I don’t really have a say in the matter. We’d best be off.” They both nodded and Richie grabbed the duffel bag at his feet before they ran out of the room and followed Wentworth down the stairs. They clambered into their buggy as Maggie strapped the horse into its reins and hopped in the front. She cracked the reins and the horse took off, speeding through the forest in a direction Richie had never taken Eddie before--out of town, he assumed.

Before they reached the road, however, they were stopped by a larger force even than before--about twelve police officers, all of them on horseback. They ran up on the smaller horse and buggy, spooking the Tozier’s horse who took off running in the opposite direction. With no horse to pull them, they were stalled and had nowhere to go when the police began to dismount from their own horses and surround the vehicle. Eddie watched, his eyes desperate and his breathing becoming shallow until Richie squeezed his hand. He looked at the Toziers, all of them looked back at him. He couldn’t leave these people. Not now. Not after spending months with them, they had become his family; better than the false semblance of family he’d had ever since his father’s passing.

They all locked eyes with each other, knowing expressions painting their faces. In the split second Eddie realized something was about to happen, they all leaped up and clambered out of their seats, running in opposite directions when their feet hit the soft ground. Eddie wove a familiar path through the forest, going where he knew no one would ever find him--to Richie’s “Eiffel Tower.” He ran quick, quicker than he ever had in his life. And he was fast. He knew nobody was even close to catching him as he stopped hearing footfalls within minutes. He slowed to a jog, listening for any sign of people as he reached the base of the tall hill. He heard nothing, and he began to climb--it was easier to scale the rocks alone and took him almost half the time it had the night before with Richie.

Once at the top, he sat at the edge where he and Richie had kissed just hours earlier; it felt like a lifetime ago. He folded his knees up in front of him and watched the wind dance through the leaves on the trees below him. After ten or fifteen minutes of near silence, he heard someone climbing up the side of the hill--more accurately, he heard their huffing as they made their way over the last few rocks on the side of the hill before it plateaued into the surface where Eddie was sitting just a few feet away. Before he could even react to stand up and find a hiding place, he saw the edges of dark curls peeking up from the edge of the hill, bobbing as the body they were attached to pulled itself up onto the next rock. He let out a loud sigh, “Oh thank god it’s just you.”

Richie’s head popped up over the side, a wide grin on his face. “Eds! You’re here!” He pulled himself the rest of the way up and paused to catch his breath before making his way over to sit next to Eddie.

“Yeah. What took you so long?”

“I tried! I’m sorry I’m not as fast as you.” He smiled softly and leaned in, closing the distance between them to connect their lips. This kiss was more rushed, more desperate than the last one. The unspoken worry between them added a fierce, charged energy to it. Eddie could feel his fingertips tingling as he reached up to grab Richie by the back of the neck. They let themselves be more open, more vulnerable than they had before--they both knew without voicing it aloud that it very well may be the last time they’d ever see each other. They got lost in each other; Richie moved his hands and grabbed Eddie under his thighs to pull him into his lap, Eddie snaked both his arms over Richie’s shoulders, losing his hands in Richie’s thick hair. They got lost in the feeling, in the emotion, and they didn’t hear the footsteps behind them as someone made their way up to their hiding spot. The stranger slowly scaled the treacherous hill and stumbled upon them at the top, their bodies just a mess of limbs and soft moans as they continued to kiss, completely unaware that they had company.

The stranger cleared his throat and said, “Mr. Kaspbrak, I think you need to come with me.”

* * *

Eddie later found himself in his own bed, laying alone in the dark as night fell in Treegap. He rolled over to his side and curled his legs up in front of him as he listened to the rain pound on the roof of his house--one of those torrential summer rain storms. He could hear the wind howling and ripping through the trees and he thought of watching the trees from above; he remembered how the limbs danced in the wind and how the leaves were swept around the forest floor. He thought about Richie. Watching the trees with Richie, swimming with Richie, sleeping with Richie. It occurred to him dully somewhere in the back of his mind that this would be the first night in the last few weeks he’d slept in a bed alone, and he curled in closer to himself, pulling his blanket up over his head.

Just as he’d tucked himself under his blanket, he heard a light tinkling on his bedroom window. Assuming it was just a branch hitting the pane, he rolled over so that his back was to the window. The noise was incessant though, and it continued for a few minutes. Annoyed, he sat up and lit the candle next to his bed, getting up and carrying it over to the window to see what all the ruckus was about. He just about jumped ten feet back when he got to the window to find a sopping wet Richie perched on a tree branch inches away from the glass with one finger extended out tapping on it. Once he caught sight of Eddie inside, his face lit up and he waved. Which, to Eddie, seemed very inappropriate for the situation. He set the candle down on the desk next to the window, slid it open quietly, and watched as Richie tumbled in, leaving water all over the floor. He stood up and shook his hair out, dousing Eddie as well as the candle and they were pitched into darkness. “What the fuck, dude,” Eddie hissed.

“We need your help,” Richie whispered back in the dark.

Eddie lit the gas lamp on the desk and leaned back against it, looking Richie up and down. “What you need is some dry clothes. Come on. Quietly.” He threw on some of his own clothes and shoes before leading Richie down the stairs to his father’s study. He opened up the big oak double doors inside the room to reveal a closet full of clothes that used to belong to his father--his mother simply hadn’t had the heart to get rid of them. After he’d found something suitable for Richie to wear and stashed the wet clothes, they ran out the door to where Went was waiting for them in the buggy. They both clambered in, glad to be under cover from the rain. Richie shook his hair out again, worse in the confined space. Eddie recoiled back, “Can you--” he sighed bitterly, “ _Why?_ ”

Wentworth chuckled as he looked back and forth between the two of them. “Nice to see you again, Ed. Now we need your help with Maggie.”

Eddie settled in as he listened to Wentworth calmly explain what had happened after he and Richie ran off, his story interspersed with comments from a very overzealous and excited Richie. Went had run off and found a good hiding spot where he holed up for a few hours, but Maggie had been caught and arrested on charges of kidnapping--Sonia had the police force in Treegap wrapped around her finger almost as tightly as she had Eddie. Eddie subsequently explained what had happened after he and Richie had been found, leaving out the part about the compromising position in which they had been found. The police officer had stated that as long as Eddie came willingly, he didn’t need Richie to come--he hadn’t technically done anything wrong. He also said that he wouldn’t tell Sonia about how he’d found the two of them: “Your life is already hell, kid. I’m not gonna make it worse. I’m just trying to do my job.” Eddie had gone with the officer, leaving Richie alone with just a longing look over his shoulder and tears in his eyes. Richie had apparently gone to find his father, knowing exactly where he would have hidden, and they came to the conclusion that getting Maggie out of jail would be much easier with the help of someone who owned half of the town.

So the three of them devised a plan inside the unlit buggy, hashing out a couple of options and finally deciding on one they were all pretty sure would work. So they rode into town and dropped Eddie off a few yards away from the jailhouse so he’d have to run through the rain, making the rouse more convincing. As he trudged through the downpour, Eddie reflected on the last month of his life, comparing it to the short amount of time he’d been back home with his mother earlier that day. Those few hours back home had felt longer than the entirety of the time he had spent with Richie and his family; there was no way he could go back to that for the rest of his life, it was his living hell. Conversely, staying with Richie would put his whole family, their way of life, their entire existence at risk. Leaving the Toziers would be painful, one of the most painful things he’d ever done in his life. But staying with them and watching his presence invite their downfall, he knew deep inside, would be so much worse. As he walked, mud caking his shoes, splashing up and covering his ankles, he let the rain soak him to the bone. It dripped through his hair, drowning the loose strands, plastering them, freezing, to his forehead and the sides of his face. The rain fell across his eyes and wetted his eyelashes. He let his eyes close, allowing tears to fall and mix with the rain; he could taste the saltiness of his tears blended with the earthiness of the rain as the droplets fell heavily into his mouth. Everything about it made him think of he and Richie: the salty sterility of the tears mixing perfectly with the almost dirty, natural essence of the rain. The rain reminded him of Richie, and at that moment he thought it probably always would.

As the light of the prison grew in the distance, he steeled himself, rehearsing their plan over and over again in his head, needing to get it perfect. If he couldn’t stay with the Toziers, at least he could get Maggie back. He needed to do this one thing for them, after everything they’d done for him. He thought of Richie, of his deep, warm eyes, his dopey but enrapturing smile, his endearingly crooked teeth, his perfectly imperfect freckles, his stupid, ugly, thick, adorable glasses. He took a deep breath and a final step forward and began to bang on the door of the jailhouse.

The guard arrived at the door seconds later, swinging it open and ushering a completely sopping Eddie inside. “Boy, what are you doing out in a storm like this? You’ll catch pneumonia!”

Eddie started gasping for air, acting out of breath as if he’d been running through the rain for miles. “I-- It’s the people who kidnapped me, sir! They came back for me, my mother couldn’t stop them! I ran away but they’re coming for me, I think they’re outside!” He spoke through gasps and sobs, playing his part convincingly.

The guard raised an eyebrow and looked out the window behind Eddie suspiciously. “You stay here, young man. Lock the door behind me, you’ll be safe in here.” He gave Eddie a ring of keys from the desk and grabbed a musket before heading out the door into the all-encompassing darkness outside.

Grinning to himself, Eddie locked the door behind the guard. “Idiot,” he whispered under his breath as he turned the key in the lock. He turned around and swung the ring of keys around on his finger, whistling as he made his way around to the holding cells in the back of the building. It took him no time at all to find Maggie, she was closest to the front as she had just been apprehended earlier that evening. He unlocked the door quickly, rousing her attention as he fiddled with the padlock on the cell door.

“Oh, Eddie! You’re here! Where are my other boys?” She asked hurriedly, looking into his eyes with an expression of deep gratitude.

Eddie finally found the right key, exclaiming as it turned the lock. “They’re outside, we’d better go now!” He led her through the hallway past the rest of the cells and out the back door of the building, where they found Went and Richie waiting, just outside the door and a few feet away from the buggy. Eddie was immediately scooped up in an embrace from Richie, and Wentworth followed suit, picking Maggie up by the waist and leaving a wet kiss on her cheek. The four of them stood there for a moment, just enjoying the sense of relief they found in finally being in each other’s arms again.

When Richie and Eddie pulled back, they turned to meet Maggie and Went’s eyes, the two of them were just looking at the boys, sadness painting their features. Richie looked between them desperately, “What are you guys doing? Let’s go.”

“Rich, you know we can’t do this again, we all saw what happened when we tried to bring him last time. It’s too dangerous to bring a Kaspbrak, plain and simple. If Eddie comes with us, they’ll never stop lookin’ for him. They’ll hunt us down until they get him back.”

Eddie looked from Wentworth back over to Richie, finally letting the tears that had been welling in his eyes fall in big, fat drops. He nodded slowly and reached a hand up to cup Richie’s cheek, wiping a freshly fallen tear from it, grazing his thumb softly against the freckles that fell across his pale skin.

“Eds, please. I can’t go without you.”

Eddie shook his head. “Richie, you have to. He’s right. My mom--she’ll never stop.”

Richie reached his hands out, wrapping them both around the back of Eddie’s neck, brushing a thumb gently back and forth in the soft waves at the nape of his neck, just below his ear. “I love you Eddie, and _I’ll_ never stop. Please.” He leaned forward to press their foreheads together and let the rain from their hair drip down their faces, swirling with their tears once more. “Just... Go to the spring. Drink the water. We’ll come back for you when it’s safe. You could even live here until your mother dies, for the rest of her life. Then you could come with us after. Eddie, please. I can’t lose you.”

Eddie tilted his head up a bit to leave a quick kiss on Richie’s soft, full lips. He pulled back and nodded his head, smiling as wide as he could through the tears. “You have to show me the real Eiffel Tower at some point.”

Wentworth’s voice came floating through the darkness from where he was sticking his head out of the buggy door. “Rich. Now. We’ve got to go.”

Richie looked back at his dad and tilted his head in a curt nod before turning back around to look into Eddie’s eyes one more time. “Promise me, Eds. Promise.”

Instead of a response, Eddie threw his arms around Richie’s shoulders, pulling him in for a tight hug. “Richie,” he whispered, “go.”

Richie pulled back and placed both his hands on Eddie’s cheeks, “I will love you until the day I die, Eddie Kaspbrak. The day I die.” He leaned down and placed a soft, wet kiss on Eddie’s forehead before turning around and running to meet his parents, finally letting a sob out as he went. Eddie watched as the buggy drove off out of town, he could see Richie’s face through the back window watching him as they drove off, tears streaming down his face. Eddie dropped to his knees in the mud, not caring about how dirty his clothes would be, what his mother would think, what she would do. He cradled his head in his hands and just cried. He let the sound of his cries be covered up by the thundering of the rain as he lost sight of the buggy in the darkness.

 

**1883**

The next few years found Eddie isolating himself from society even more than he already had been. He still had absolutely no intention of marrying anyone his mother put forth for him, running Myra off in a dramatic scene that gave the entire town something to talk about for months. He spent most of his time alone, ignoring even his mother’s begging for him to join her for dinner. He spent nights sleeping in his father’s study, his bedroom was too drafty and the windows let in the sounds of the wind in the trees, the pounding rain, the life in the forest chirping and buzzing. The sounds kept him up nights even though they never had before, or perhaps he had just never noticed them until now--either way, he couldn’t bear to spend time up there anymore.

He had never been much into poetry before Richie, but now it was all he read. He had searched through his father’s extensive collection of books to find the dusty and untouched anthologies of classic poems. On a night not unlike most of the nights he’d had in the last three years of his life, Eddie found himself drifting off to the sound of a howling thunderstorm outside, muffled somewhat by the thick walls of the study. His eyes drooped closed in the flickering candlelight behind a pair of small, wire-rimmed reading glasses. He didn’t bother to take them off, he’d been falling asleep in them for over two years now, his vision diminishing due to all of the late nights he had spent reading when he couldn’t sleep on his own.

The book in his lap was a well-worn, leather-bound compilation of Wordsworth, opened to the same page so many times that the binding was broken in one spot.

 

_Surprised by joy—impatient as the Wind_

_I turned to share the transport—Oh! with whom_

_But Thee, long buried in the silent Tomb,_

_That spot which no vicissitude can find?_

 

_Love, faithful love, recalled thee to my mind—_

_But how could I forget thee?—Through what power,_

_Even for the least division of an hour,_

_Have I been so beguiled as to be blind_

_To my most grievous loss!—That thought’s return_

_Was the worst pang that sorrow ever bore,_

_Save one, one only, when I stood forlorn,_

_Knowing my heart’s best treasure was no more;_

_That neither present time, nor years unborn_

_Could to my sight that heavenly face restore._

 

**1958**

It had been nearly a decade since Richie Tozier had seen his parents, so he was making his regular trip back to Treegap to meet up with them. He was driving his Ford Oldsmobile down the interstate and turned off at the exit for the town in which his parents spent most of their time. After they’d left Eddie there in 1880, Richie had insisted on taking some time to himself, and he’d been traveling the world for the last seventy-eight years, returning home about every ten years to see his parents in Treegap. He could tell he was getting closer to town as the road he was driving on turned into what was now a two-lane highway, leading into what had become a small but bustling little town.

Richie spotted the sign at the edge of town which read, “Now Entering: Treegap.” He pulled off onto the shoulder, letting cars whizz past him quickly as he got out and shut the door quietly behind him. He turned and looked at where the Kaspbrak house had once stood almost eighty years earlier, leaning against the hood of the car as he took it in. The house that Eddie had grown up in had been torn down in the forties in order to make the road into Treegap less of a winding path; the surrounding woods, however, still remained untouched. Richie looked at the now empty plot of land across the road, as he always did when he returned to town. He sighed before starting out to make his way through Eddie’s family’s land into the still dense wood that came right up to the side of the road.

He wove a familiar path through the trees, careful not to disturb anything. As he got closer and closer to the clearing that held the spring his family had drunk from almost two centuries before, he heard light footsteps coming from somewhere distant in the forest. He turned around and started off in the direction he thought they were coming from, nervous someone else had stumbled upon the spring, that someone had discovered his family’s secret. He could tell that he was getting closer to the source of the soft footfalls, and he broke into a light jog as they became louder. A bird chirped in the distance and he whipped his head to the side toward the noise, still running. The second he looked back ahead of him, there was a figure just inches away from him—a boy who looked to be about his age, who had his back turned to Richie. Not able to stop moving in time, Richie collided with him and the two of them tumbled over, the other boy yelling as they fell, “You stupid idiot! Watch where you’re walking!”

Richie landed on the other boy’s back, losing his glasses along the way, both of them ending up face down in the dirt of the forest. Richie immediately rolled off and began searching the ground for the pair of glasses he’d recently gotten switched out for a new, more stylish pair of horn-rimmed frames, although they still had the same almost comically thick lenses. As he patted at the ground around him, apologizing profusely all the while, he heard the air go out of the stranger’s lungs and looked up at the noise. “Rich?” The voice was familiar, almost as if he’d heard it in another life, and just as he was cursing his poor eyesight for not allowing him to see the face connected to the voice, he felt his glasses being slid onto his face. As the scene in front of him came into focus, Richie felt his heart begin hammering in his chest. Eddie—his Eddie, Eddie Kaspbrak, who he never in a million years thought he’d see again—was crouching on the ground in front of him, his eyes round and sparkling with wonder. He was still the same age as he had been when Richie and his family had left Treegap all those years ago; still had the same soft, brown hair, the same freckles across his nose, the same warm eyes framed by dark, thick lashes.

“Eds?”

“Richie! You came back!” Eddie was beaming as he sat back on the ground. “About fuckin’ time.”

Richie was still reeling, “You drank the water? You actually did it? Why didn’t I hear from you?”

“Yeah. About a month after you left. I just didn’t know how to find you. So… I’ve been waiting.” Eddie sighed, looking down at his hands where he was fiddling with the hem of his shirt. “I tried to find your house out in the woods, but as more and more time passed, I couldn’t remember where it was... I couldn’t remember where anything was out here. I tried to find where we went swimming, I tried to find the spring again, but after I drank from it, I just kept forgetting more and more details from the time we were together. I was starting to think I had dreamt the whole thing, lord knows my mother never brought it up again. Until I stopped aging. Mom died about five years after, not enough time to _really_ notice, she just doted on how I still looked like her ‘little boy.’ So I kept the land, the house, but fired all the help. I lived in that house alone for a while until they bought it from me to make the road into town. They wanted the forest too, for more development, but I knew I couldn’t let that happen, so I’ve been moving around a bit, always staying close. But I come back every now and again, just to try and remember… or at least to try not to forget.” When he finished talking he looked up from his lap and into Richie’s eyes, still enormous orbs behind the lenses of his glasses.

Richie whispered, still in shock, “The number of times I’ve been here, walked through these woods to get back to the house. And it took us eighty years to run into each other. I just thought… I never thought you’d do it. God, I’ve missed you, Eddie.”

“I’ve missed you too, stupid idiot. I’m glad you’re back because I never got to tell you…”

Richie leaned forward, “Tell me what?”

“Tell you that…That I love you, too. Until the day I die, I’ll love you, too, Richie Tozier.” Eddie leaned forward to shorten the distance between them. “I guess that phrase holds more significance now than it would have if I’d said it before.”

Richie reached up to cup his cheeks with both hands, tears in his eyes. “Dad always talks about how we’re just stuck, how this isn’t what life is supposed to be like. The wheel is supposed to keep turning and it doesn’t turn for us. But I think the wheel _stopped_ turning for us so that I could be with you, Eddie. I had to wait for you. _This_ is how it’s supposed to be. Fuck the wheel. I love you.”

Eddie nodded, tears now falling from his eyes. “I’ve been waiting so long.”

Richie wiped at a big teardrop just under his eye and lifted his face up by his chin so they could make eye contact. “I promise you, I’ve been waiting for longer. But I’m here now.”

Eddie smiled and closed the remaining few inches between them, sealing their lips together in a wet kiss—wet both from the passion and the tears that were still falling from both of their eyes. This time Richie didn’t kiss him as if he had a thousand years to practice, he kissed Eddie like he hadn’t kissed anyone in a thousand years and needed to make up for lost time. The kiss was messy, the air was filled with gasping breaths and the sounds of their lips smacking, but neither of them could be bothered to care. Eddie pulled Richie down so they were laying down on the ground, letting himself be pinned under Richie’s weight. Richie pulled back after a few minutes, giggling. “Hey, what was it you said last time we were in this position? Something like… do you have any clue how gross this is?” Richie mused, looking awe-struck into Eddie’s eyes, “Something about your mother fucking losing her mind?”

“Hey, don’t bring up my late mother when you’re on top of me, asshole,” Eddie said with a mock frown as he looked up into Richie’s eyes, which were just as deep and spellbinding as they had been eighty years earlier.

Richie reached up to tap Eddie on the nose, “I may be an asshole, but I’m _your_ asshole, there’s not really anything you can do to get rid of me now. We’re gonna be the two biggest assholes alive when the world comes to an end, and we’ll get watch it happen.”

Eddie smiled. “Looking forward to it.”

**Author's Note:**

> Poems-  
> Song of the Open Road - Walt Whitman  
> Surprised by Joy - William Wordsworth  
>    
> Thank you thank you thank you to the lovely Shannon for inviting me to join this project, editing this, and dealing with me. And to Hannah, thank you for encouraging me every step of the way and reading this thing like a million times I love you with my whole heart


End file.
